#3 How AI Impacts Work for People with Disabilities
Exploring the good, bad and ugly of AI at work & an insight into living with a rare neurological condition
Welcome to the third edition of Etcetera. This month’s newsletter explores having a disability at work, and how AI is changing the landscape in both good and bad ways.
Earlier this week I read a recent exclusive piece on the Guardian that caught my attention. The title read: “Call centre staff to be monitored via webcam for home-working ‘infractions’”. The article detailed how the company, Teleperformance, which employs around 380,000 staff in 34 countries, is using AI webcams to monitor staff while working from home.
The AI-enabled webcams scan for “infractions” like eating on the job, taking a toilet break without registering it, using your mobile phone and sitting idle. The webcam will recognise workers faces and upon detection of a breach, they will forward an image to their manager.
Aside from this raising alarm about the role of AI-based surveillance for low paying roles, it got me thinking about how this will impact people with disabilities. There are two different applications for AI, and I see them having a diametrically opposed relationship with disabled workers.
The first application is using AI as a performance management tool. This can including using AI webcams for remote or in-person monitoring of facial expressions, workers tone and pace when speaking, and semantic analysis (essentially do you sound happy or sad). This has already infiltrated recruitment practices, with one company using AI facial expression analysis to filter out job applicants.
There are a few problems with the application of AI in this context. One, it isn’t evidence-based. There are no peer-reviewed articles that evidence how facial expression analysis in interviews links to job performance. But a bigger problem is that AI applied in this context is discriminatory. This study shows that emotional analysis technology assigns more negative emotions to Black men’s faces than white men’s faces. Also, some companies claim to use AI computer vision to monitor applicants pulse and combine this with facial expression analysis to help hiring managers to rank candidates.
This is also problematic. What if you have a disability that causes your heart rate to be high? What if you had facial paralysis and the AI algorithm couldn’t detect any smiles? (Or if you had botox..). These companies describe their products as removing bias from the hiring process, but rather they have discrimination baked in.
I understand that appeal though. It’s attractive to think there could be a solution as simple as software that could hire the right people, and keep them productive.
But this is exactly the problem. Human’s are profoundly complex, deep and emotional. Trying to use AI to fix human problems simply won’t work. What does work to keep people engaged in their jobs is basically the exact opposite of AI. It’s moving away from trying to make us more automated and robotic. It is giving staff profound autonomy in their roles, even in a call centre environment. It is treating people with respect, trusting them, and paying them well. These things are harder than buying software.
The other application of AI which I think could increase the participation of disabled workers is in applying AI in more general tasks. For example, a lot of “grunt” roles are already being automated. These are roles that focus on repetitive, mostly administrative tasks. This is freeing up a large part of the labour market to do more creative roles. Here, look at the top 10 skills of 2025, as told by the World Economic Forum. Notice how thinking, learning, problem-solving and creativity are the top five skills.
This is incredibly important because research shows that people with autism and other learning disabilities display higher levels of creativity and were “far more likely to come up with unique answers to creative problems”.
One of my favourite papers, “Underdog Entrepreneurs”, writes about how negative personal circumstances like cognitive or physical disabilities play a powerful role in getting people to become effective entrepreneurs. This is because the conditions that challenge people have led to creative adaptive requirements that foster resilience, creativity, discipline and originality. I can see that with new AI programs like machine-learning speech to text software, and other AI tools that haven’t been developed yet, the access to working opportunities will become larger for those previously excluded from the workplace.
This excites me. Think of the incredible innovations that are waiting to be birthed into the world from people who have not been able to work yet because of how employers exclude people with a disability.
It also makes me think about how we perceive disabilities in the workplace now. I follow this amazing disability advocate on Instagram called Imogen. She writes a lot about ableism. Ableism is ‘discrimination in favour of able-bodied people’. The more I’ve learnt about ableism, the more I have reflected on my own journey through the world of work.
I remember working in HR and hearing terms like “reasonable adjustments”. They are adjustments made for people who need different working conditions to thrive. Embedded in this term is the implication that there are some adjustments that are unreasonable. I remember going over to my boyfriend’s mums house one day, and on the disabled park outside their house, she had crossed our dis and wrote en. The parking space now read “enabled park”. That shift in perspective is huge. There are changes we can make that enable people. It isn’t about being disabled, different, or less than. It’s simply enabling people.
We are so used to keeping our health problems a secret. And in the world of capitalism, where efficiency and productivity determine our value on the labour market, is it any surprise people keep their disabilities hidden?
I used to think that being honest about having a disability would decrease my perceived value and even my perceived skill. But now I’ve realised that if I never share my personal story, people will never see that I can get a PhD, write a book, pursue my dreams and have a chronic health condition.
If I am never vocal about the things that enable me to work, then people will keep designing AI products that see going to the toilet and taking regular breaks as an “infraction”.
Some things I consumed in January:
Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price, PhD. They have written a phenomenal book, which I really encourage you to read. It looks at the “laziness lie”. If you enjoyed this months topic, you’ll enjoy this.
Loved Clothes Last. This is the most enjoyable book I’ve read in ages. It shows how rebellious it is in the world of fash fashion to say a big fuck you to the man and rewear all your clothes, over and over again.
Operation Varsity Blues. This Netflix documentary was a great watch. It really brings into question the place in society of “prestigious” universities.
Made You Look. Another Netflix documentary that charts the demise of Knoedler New York's oldest commercial art gallery. It's a fascinating insight into America's most significant art fraud.
This cool article “Trans People Tell Us How They Fell in Love”. The article sheds light on some ace stories which are hardly ever shown on social media.
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